Peering over the hill...

South_coast · 29 March 2020 at 9:50PM

Frozen milk is fine, you just need to give it LOADS of time to defrost (more than you would ever think possible). And if there's still some left when you next buy fresh, you can lob it back in the freezer 👍

Grogged · 30 March 2020 at 10:06PM

Enjoyed a nice beef pho tonight after a busy day, mainly spent in video meetings.
I know I'm very busy, just didn't seem to have anything to show for it! 😞

Got tempted by Mr Amaz0n, fire hd 8 for £27. This will replace my existing 4 year old one. Quick install of G00gle play store and it will be a normal Android one (just don't tell bozo...). Reduced to £44, with further 40% off using firepromo code.

In real MFW news, TT £4.87 to mortgage after Monday rounding down current account to nearest £5. Another days interest saved, only a zillion to go! 😆

Accounts day tomorrow, spreadsheet standing by...

Grogged · 1 April 2020 at 8:34AM

Marching on – Q1 in Review

Mr Heaty

In January 2020 Mr Heaty joined the household, courtesy of Hive and a black Friday deal.

On a like-for-like basis he’s saved us 6% (£7.46) in running costs and 12% (553 kWh) in usage.

The running costs are slightly skewed as our plan changed in November, so our fuel costs went up slightly. We could have saved a smidge more if Mr Heaty had started his job at the start of January, rather than the third week.

2019

Jan £47.88 1,871 kWh

Feb £37.17 1,452 kWh

Mar £35.25 1,377 kWh

2020

Jan £44.27 1,628 kWh

Feb £35.89 1,318 kWh

Mar £32.68 1,201 kWh

Mr Mortgage

We locked in a new 5 year deal in December with NW, mainly to offset any Brexit risks.

Up until this point we’d regularly OP a fixed amount each month. Every December we’d up the OP when the mortgage update letter came through with the new lower payment for next year.

This year a slight change of tack. We’re now looking to make quarterly OP instead of monthly. This will allow us to OP in £500+ chunks and reduce the term rather than the monthly payments. The March payment reduced our term by 2 months. Over the 5 year fix this would reduce the term by about 18 months.

We’ve also introduced a weekly TT OP scheme on a Monday (M for Mortgage!), rounding down the bank balance to the nearest £5. Over a month this saves an extra 3-4 days of daily interest (currently £4.57).

So far we’ve overpaid by £574 this year, our mortgage now stands at £95,793 a reduction of £2,383 on the starting balance of £98,175. If we can keep that pace then it should reduce to around £88,850 in December.

Mr Banks & Mrs Savings

Strategy is simples here – if it’s not needed to pay a bill or puts food on the table then it goes into savings (although we do keep a small bank balance to avoid overdraft).

Budgeted items are transferred back to the bank when needed. This includes all treats, car stuff, etc.

Savings are considered short term, so mainly used as EF. Lost a few soldiers to pay car bills (tax, insurance, MOT, etc.) and transfers to Pension pots.

Mr Pensions

Anything not considered as short-term is considered as part of Pension planning. This includes long term savings and ISA’s as hopefully we won’t need them until retirement. It’s a mental thing (not madness! 🤪 more that it has a long term purpose and spending it requires discussion, lots of discussion 🕵️‍♀️).

I changed one my old pension to a van guard SIPP as it was chronically underperforming, any profit seemed to go in charges. This had a domino effect on the other orphaned pensions I had.

Also rejigged some savings to VG ISA as well. As the fees are capped across all VG holdings, there is effectively no ISA fee.

The SIPP is really a top-up of the company pension, but now I just have 2 pensions funds – work and VG, which is much easier to manage.

Given the current climate, pensions have remained static. The new SIPP has been drip invested, so have managed to take advantage of the current climate. Currently 40% equities, 20% bonds and 40% cash. I’m going to leave it that way for now.

Mr Spreadsheet

A lot has changed.

We started the year having a budget plan and recording the monthly account balances.

Since then dedicated pension and savings tabs have been added as has a mortgage tracker with very basic modelling.

The changes are really to centralising things, but still keep everything manageable.

Next will be a salary section.

Corona Party! 😷🧪🧬

So far this year we’ve managed to increase our net worth by £11k, most of this through reduced mortgage and pension gains.

This will obviously change as the year progresses.

We’ve been told that we’re going to 4 day working, with the loss of 20% salary.

This will be hard but manageable and isn’t really a surprise given where the world is now.

So we’re planning on writing off 2020 financially and using our MSE skills and family to pull through this together.
We’re in a lot better position than many. Whilst we can’t do much, I am thinking what can that day be put towards. I certainly don’t want it to be a backside day, so will be seeing how we can help locally.

Keep safe everyone, ATB G.

Grogged · 10 May 2020 at 2:25PM

The April Update

Lack of Posts

I’ve posted a few comments here and there but nothing here.

I wasn’t sure how to write this bit or even if I wanted to. Sadly, my dad died of CV19, luckily it was quick as I know for some it hasn’t been.

Having drafted it a few times, I think I’ll leave it there for that bit.

Money, what is it good for?…

The world certainly changed last month.

For us it was a 20% pay cut, no furlough.

The reality was closer to 15% as I get paid some allowances (car, etc.) that not being base salary were not affected.

We decided to keep paying everything and not to take any payment breaks on the mortgage, etc.

What we have done is stop overpaying the mortgage and put that into savings.

Now have some shiny M@rcus accounts where all our savings have gone as the NW (presumably along with most high street banks) stopping paying any meaningful interest.

We’ve locked 1/3 away for a year and the rest in easy access.

I’m still doing my TT on Mondays, so OP the mortgage by £12.61 (or 2.5 days interest! 🤣)…

Funnily enough I do have an awful lot of NSD racking up… 😊

Still paying into my VG SIPP and ISA,.

The reality being that the discretionary spends (eating out, haircuts, having a life) have cancelled out much of the lost salary.

Lockdown, but not out..

We’ve moved to doing shops every two weeks, our freezer has never been as full.

Now mastered thawing milk, we saved up a weeks worth of the one pint containers, so now decant into these and freeze them, having fresher milk in week 1 and defrosted in week 2.

We cooked fresh anyway, so bulk buy meat and freeze it, same with bread and veg. Apart from using the freezer more (and properly!), not really seen a big change from multiple pre-lockdown shopping to fortnightly shopping.

Had a street VE party, music blaring out with people waving, eating and shouting from front doors (no front gardens on our modern estate). Felt we honoured the spirit…

Stay safe.